Hacks meets Rebecca Makkai in this rollicking novel about a cautious daughter and her eccentric, estranged mother venturing west in search of buried treasure—and a way back to each other—before they run out of patience, money, and options.
SCAVENGERS
by Kathleen Boland
Viking, January 2026
(via The Gernert Company)
After being fired for taking an uncharacteristic risk at her commodities trading job, Bea Macon sublets her New York apartment and books a one-way ticket to stay with her mother, Christy, a free spirit who has been living in Salt Lake City on Bea’s dime.
Usually the responsible one, Bea isn’t about to admit exactly why she’s suddenly decided to visit, but she isn’t the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map. She has . . . a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S.?
Bea is convinced this is just another one of her mother’s wild larks, an elaborate way to refuse, as she has for Bea’s entire life, to finally grow up. But Christy believes she’s onto something—and she’s arranged a rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the guy she’s been obsessively trading theories with online to prove it. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised land, the other a wasteland, they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined.
Populated with unforgettable characters and set against one of the world’s most oddly enrapturing landscapes, Scavengers is a funny and heartbreaking novel about old injuries, new beginnings, and the lengths to which we’ll go to find, escape, and reinvent ourselves..
Kathleen Boland‘s fiction has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere, and she has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. The former event director for Catapult/Counterpoint Press/Soft Skull Press, she earned her MFA from Louisiana State University, where she received the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award.
Germany, 1901. Domestic servant Lissi has embarked on a foolish affair with the scion of the family she works for. But her hopes of a romantic wedding are shattered, and when she finds herself pregnant, alone and desperate, she decides to leave her home town. Meanwhile, Julia Varrell has been lured into an arranged marriage under false pretences, and feels lonely on her husband’s idyllic estate. She, too, wants out. And so Lissi and Julia find themselves on board a ship bound for New York.
Book 1: A MILLION STARS ABOVE (
Book 2: A THOUSAND FLAMES BELOW (March 2025)
When Melanie’s fiancé has an accident and ends up in a coma, young Melanie fears for his life, and for their future. After weeks of desperation and paralysis, she seeks refuge and distraction on her 96-year-old great-grandmother Hanna’s estate. In the attic of the manor house, she discovers a Vietnamese fairy tale – and then Hanna tells her about her eventful past: how she grew up in Vietnam as the daughter of a wealthy family, and how she met her ‘jasmine sister’ Tanh, a girl born into poverty. As Melanie listens, fascinated, her great-grandmother regales her with tales of adventure among temples and rice fields, and the story of an extraordinary friendship between two girls separated by a fateful event. But Melanie finds solace not only in Hanna’s memories and unshakeable zest for life, but also in the company of widower Thomas, who looks after the manor’s gardens. And suddenly, she feels a little spark of hope stirring in her heart…